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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8515167" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 87: September 1993part 3/5Eye Of The Leviathan: Another issue, another tournament adventure that is both linear and jokey, making me roll my eyes. The PC's are hired by the ex-speaker of Raven's Bluff to retrieve some valuables recently stolen from his home. Unknown to both him and you, one of those is a powerful artifact, with a whole load of water and mind control powers. (which you will absolutely not be allowed to keep at the end if you realise that and try to pretend you failed in your mission to use it for your own benefit.) As usual for tournament adventures, there's no actual detective work involved in finding the culprit, you're pointed straight in the right direction to go from one encounter to the next. A bar fight at Embrol Sludges', which at least earns them a point for reusing established setting details from previous issues. A search along the dockfront that soon reveals the destination of the thieves, and only one ship headed in that direction so you don't get a choice of your companions. A pirate attack involving weresharks, who'll escape underwater with the artifact no matter how you roll in combat. Thankfully there's a plentiful supply of water breathing potions onboard so you can follow them. This leads you to a crashed spelljamming ship inhabited by a walrus called Googoogoojoob, who communicates purely in song, filled with 4th wall breaking joke cargo, and finally to the wereshark lair, which is another small linear dungeon, to finally confront them and their aboleth master, which is also played for comedy. It doesn't push the boundaries of worst adventure they ever done, since it's a decent length, doesn't have any racist jokes, and has some degree of choice in how you resolve the encounters, but it's still yet another formulaic railroaded tournament adventure that does intentionally irritating things, doesn't let you enjoy all the rewards for your hard work, and really not what I'm looking for. Another one to put on the boringly bad pile.The Living Galaxy: Roger's topic this time is another fairly generic one we've seen plenty of times before. Advice on how to build NPC's? You need that for every system, not just sci-fi ones. Since trading cards are a current fad in the TSR offices, he suggests cutting out a photo of someone suitable to their personality & appearance, sticking it on a bit of cardboard and then writing the abbreviated stats on the other side. This forces to you cut things down to what's crucial to actual play instead of waffling on about backstories that the players will never actually engage with. If D&D alignments are getting boring as a shorthand for personality types, you could use Myers-Briggs instead. (I'd rather not, since it turns out the creator was a massive racist) The other suggestions are more familiar ones, giving you lots of good places to steal from, including real life of course, which is full of weirder characters than any novel. Just make sure you remix the details enough that it's not completely obvious, because does the world really need another James Bond or Robin Hood expy? Overall, I'll rate this one as above average because some of the ideas are genuinely novel even after all the other variants on this topic I've seen over the years. It's just a matter of using them all in the right combinations to get the best out of them.The Fun Proficiency: A whole new proficiency just to have fun? In this edition, with our limited slot selection? I think not. Thankfully it isn't new crunchy stuff where the system least supports it, but one of our regular bits of advice on how to handle yourself at a convention. Learn how to pace yourself, a 3-4 day convention takes a lot of energy. Having fun is more important than strict adherence to the rules. Don't try to rules lawyer the GM unless you want your character to die horribly. Now that contrasts sharply with Gary's old pronouncements that tournament games must adhere strictly to the RAW to count, otherwise it's not fair on all the other people running through the same scenario around the world, but I guess that was always a theoretical ideal even he never adhered too. Making sure you show up to all your booked events on time and prepared never goes out of fashion though. (although once again, you need to strike a balance between being prepared and not giving yourself back problems by lugging a rucksack full of rulebooks around all weekend) Be polite to everyone, particularly the servicepeople, they do a lot of work for the pay they get (and at an RPG convention, many are volunteers) and can make your life a misery if you annoy them. Not that different from the previous times they've done this, but with the emphasis shifted around. I have no doubt we'll see it's like again in the future.</blockquote>

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